Hatchery Salmon, Farmed Salmon, and Wild Salmon

I was taken aback today when I read this in a letter from a JC in the Autumn 2009 edition of USC Trojan Family Magazine (As I write this, the link still has the Summer 2009 edition as the latest one):

Thank you for explaining that "wild caught" Alaska salmon are really farmed! I was "tricked" by advertising!

I hadn't read the original article in the Summer edition so I went to see what had been written that elicited this response. In an article called "Consider the Oyster" I found the passage that sparked the comment above:

He also retains mixed feelings about hatcheries, which are far more common than people realize. About half of Alaska’s “wild” salmon come from hatcheries, he says.

Fish from hatcheries do not breed with wild fish. But they do compete with them for food. And hatcheries can produce lots and lots of hungry salmon.

Ironically, the very fish that were supposed to save wild salmon runs may be contributing to their demise.

“They could be constantly facing this competition against these hatchery fish,” Hedgecock says. “Maybe they’d have a better chance of surviving if they didn’t have to compete.”

He would prefer to see more emphasis on the harder approach to conservation: fixing and protecting the salmon’s native habitat.

To use a drinking-water analogy, hatcheries are like an extra shot of chlorine: easy, fast and cheaper for a city than making sure it has great water to start with.

“By the time you get to a hatchery, you’re desperate,” Hedgecock says.

Is it true that half the Alaska salmon are hatchery salmon? The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) website has a link to a PDF file of the Alaska Salmon Enhancement Program 2008 Annual Report.

In the abstract is says:

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game oversees and regulates all state and private sector salmon enhancement and rehabilitation projects. Protection of Alaska’s natural salmon stocks requires stringent permitting processes. Geneticists, pathologists, and biologists review all projects prior to the issuance of a permit to operate a salmon ranching facility, transfer eggs or fish, or release any fish into Alaska waters. Pathology, genetic, coded wire tag, and otolith processing laboratories are maintained to provide both diagnostic information to Alaska Department of Fish and Game fishery managers, and inseason and technical expertise to the private sector.

Hatchery operators collected over 1.6 billion salmon eggs and released over 1.4 billion juvenile fish. An estimated 60 million adult salmon of hatchery origin returned. The preliminary total statewide commercial salmon harvest was 146 million fish. There were approximately 133 million salmon harvested in the common property commercial fishery, and an estimated 45 million, or 34%, were produced by the Alaska salmon enhancement program. Enhanced salmon provided an estimated $110 million or 29% of the exvessel value of the statewide common property commercial harvest. The ocean ranching program employs hundreds of Alaskans in seasonal and fulltime jobs. It is considered the largest agricultural industry in Alaska. [emphasis added]

34% is not quite "almost half" but it is a big chunk.

I thought I knew the difference between hatchery fish and farmed fish, but I decided to check on that too.

From Long Live the Kings:

Declines in wild populations gave rise to hatcheries in the Northwest beginning more than 100 years ago. Built primarily to produce fish for harvest, hatcheries compensate for freshwater habitat loss by increasing the survival of salmon through the early stages of their life cycle, and by receiving returning adults. Hatcheries now provide 70 percent of the salmon caught in Puget Sound—but they have also been identified as a contributor to the decline of wild populations. Comprehensive hatchery reform, however, aims to revolutionize how hatcheries are managed so they can help recover threatened and endangered wild populations and support sustainable fisheries. [emphasis added]

Farmed salmon are the livestock of the salmon world. Like hatchery fish, they are born and spend the early stages of their life cycle in human hands. While hatchery fish are then released to spend the majority of their life in the wild, farmed salmon are fed and matured into adults in large saltwater enclosures, usually along marine shorelines, before being harvested as food. The rapid growth in the farmed salmon industry in the last two decades has raised new questions about the environmental, social, and economic effects of salmon farms.

So, JC is wrong when she says 'wild caught' salmon are farmed. Alaska salmon are not farm salmon as we all knew.

But 34% of the (presumably 2007) Alaska salmon harvest were hatchery fish. The State website adds the term "ocean ranching." The USC article says that hatchery salmon don't breed with wild salmon - which suggests to me hatchery salmon are not truly wild salmon, even if they have a wild experience for part of their lives. And they compete with wild salmon for food. And the USC article further suggests that the survival odds of wild salmon would be greater if there were not hatchery salmon. But what about the survival rate of Alaska fisherman? And big fishing companies? Is it ok to cause the extinction of wild salmon species so humans can eat? My initial reaction would be - perhaps if that was the only thing that prevented humans from starving. But humans have other options. The salmon don't.

I have a different sense of the meaning of the words 'wild Alaskan Salmon" now. There's a 1/3 chance they are hatchery fish. And those hatchery fish may be endangering wild salmon in the competition for the food.